Stop the Clock

There's an aroma of saltiness and a sharp sea breeze as I step onto the pier. Images of destruction and chaos linger in my mind.

"I can see it all now. Oh! It was terrible - the shrieks of the wounded. The moaning of the dying, and the terror in the eyes of the girls."

The pier is modern and minimalist, a sharp-edged rectangle, raised on columns where it steps into high-energy waves. There’s a canopy of white aerodynamic fins. Amongst the grey pebbles and strewn driftwood, the pier makes a striking sculptural statement.

When I reach the end, I gaze at the uninterrupted panorama of water. This is the South Pacific Ocean and it feels vast and wild to me – a surging untameable rawness. The shoreline drops dramatically, arcing towards the deep.

129 km from shore is the gigantic Hikurangi subduction zone, part of the Pacific fault line that curves like a soft 'S' along the length of New Zealand. A catastrophic rupture of this fault line flattened the city behind me: Napier.

"...the air was full of dust from the falling buildings, people huddled together weeping and moaning. I thought the world had come to an end."

Minutes earlier, I'd emerged from an earthquake exhibition located in Tai Ahuriri (Hawke's Bay Museum & Art Gallery). The area was an envelope of dark. When my eyes adjusted, the surrounding shadows transformed into displays. Somewhere was the sound of beeping, insistent, urgent, like Morse code. Spotlights sliced the dark, illuminating images of imploded buildings and people trawling through mountains of rubble. And there were panels with dramatic quotes from survivors. People in despair who thought the world was about to end.

A video was playing, and I heard a voice that was pushing tears say: "We realised we needed each other…we all did what needed to be done."

The year was 1931, and although it felt like it, the world had not come to an end. The earthquake lasted 190 seconds, and, in the aftermath, 256 lives were lost, 161 in Napier. We know exactly when it started: 10.47am. Because that's when the clock stopped in the rotunda.

And what arose from the debris and destruction? The seeds of rebirth and re-creation. History reveals that when something is lost, what emerges is often better and could not have happened without that loss.

One need only set foot in Napier to sense there is something poetic in the air. Its enchanting, slightly surreal, time-warped charms that tourists flock to in the high season came into being because of the quake: the city found its reincarnation in an aesthetic that originated in France in the mid-to-late 1910s: art deco. In so doing, it shrugged off its colonial aesthetic, departing from the Edwardian baroque and Victorian architecture prevalent throughout New Zealand. Napier was not just rebuilt. It was reimagined.

Below the pier, smooth grey pebbles roll back and forth with the waves, catching my attention for the story they have to tell. Over millennia, the seas have transported rocks from the nearby cliffs: the pale-faced Cape Kidnappers (Te Kauwae-a-Māui) with their colonies of gannets who whitewash the cliff tops with their guano. And the nearby Mangaone cliffs. The endless swirling waters of the Pacific grind the rocks into smooth elliptical pebbles and transport them to nearby coastlines. Maybe in a thousand years, this will all be sand.

The moon appears, the white crescent-edge of a fingernail, while a foggy sun is still in the throes of disappearing. Nearby, a serpentine path set into a grass verge abuts a landscaped area with water features and sculptures and a basketball 'rink' and a curvaceous concrete skateboarding area neatly interwoven into planters. It's a skateboard park, and yet, it's not.

At first glance there’s something that appears to be a gigantic, forlorn piece of playground equipment. It's a stainless steel disc mounted on the centre of a half-round blue pipe. To my surprise, it's a sculpture that anchors the location on the horizon where the sun rose 22 years ago, on the first day of the new millennium.

I activate a fountain with my foot, pressing a button, and a nearby nozzle suddenly spouts a stream upwards, the water splashing down into a shallow basin in the path. It runs aimlessly at first, turning the dry pale concrete into a dark grey puddle which reveals, etched into the cement, patterns of unfurling fronds.

Napier strives to keep the past present. It's the lifeblood of the city. And it's future is also its past. For the last 30 years, some 40,000 tourists have flocked to Napier for an annual art deco weekend. Napier leverages the grandeur of the past, locking the city into an eternal, enchanting time warp… something I unwittingly fall into.

My accommodation is in the Masonic Art Deco Hotel, which feels like a period piece from a film set. I enter the lobby, with its graphic red and orange vinyl inlays and richly striped carpets that run up a sweeping stairway. The corridors swish and tinkle with the distant sound of decadence: long-lined, drop-waisted, tube-shaped dresses, exaggerated earrings and necklaces of black and gold with sparkles of blue, orange, and yellow. In my track pants and red chequered Swanndri, I fail to fit into this carefully choreographed fairytale. Nonetheless, I begin to blur the line between fantasy and reality, participating in a bygone era.

Tucked to one side of the Globe restaurant and bar is a cosy boutique lounge with worn leather sofas and colourful single seaters that encourage lingering. I stroll inside, ice clinking in my whiskey, and, in lampshade light, imagine F. Scott Fitzgerald sitting on a sofa penning the Great Gatsby, and just past the fireplace, Eileen Grey, sketch book in hand, is drafting the rough form of her art deco side table.

When I step into the evening, I wander back and forth along the streets Alfred Domett in 1885 named after poets and writers: Tennyson, Milton, Emerson, Dickens, Browning, Byron, Shakespeare. I head to Vinci's pizzeria and the reality of satiating my hunger. The place is foggy and bustling, and when my Napoleana emerges from the giant pizza oven, I discover that Vinci's pizzas are huge, and garnished without a hint of art deco.

Against one wall of the pizzeria is an upright fridge filled with eclectic boutique beers and wine with handwritten labels that would satisfy any aficionado. Sitting at the bar looking out the window at an art deco facade, crunching my pizza, I begin to think Napier will be forever locked in a nostalgic bubble. Which is why I'm surprised when I meet Holly Morgan.

I’m admiring an etched bronze plaque of a Cape Kidnappers gannet set into the top of one of the many black bollards that line the streets, when movement through a nearby shop window catches my eye.

"Times are different," says Holly, as she trims some clay off a mug she's spinning on her potter's wheel. She has luminous, light blue eyes that seem to flicker, as if backlit, set in a cherub-like smiling face. I've entered her small pottery shop called 'Morganmade.' "Owning your own home is no longer the New Zealand dream for young people."

For Holly, owning your own business has replaced owning your own home. Her pottery business is something to invest in, to satisfy her passion and soul and a practical alternative to investing in real estate. She’s currently working on a joint venture with another thriving small business, Thirdeye Coffee, Napier's local coffee roaster, who are expanding to Wellington. She makes the mugs; they supply the beans.

"We've got a really supportive small business network here," she says. "And we've linked up with small businesses throughout the South Island."

When I hear Holly speak, It feels like I’m in the present but looking at the future: the genesis of optimism and growth and wellbeing.

“Napier is an affordable place for young people to live and build a business and develop a lifestyle that is out of reach in the major centres,” she says.

Standing next to one of the giant Norfolk Island pines that line up like sentries along Marine Parade I glimpse a section of Tai Ahuriri adorned with a kind of multicoloured mosaic.

As I approach the colours crystallise into small round balls, the size of tennis balls, adhered to the wall on steel pins. Then I see this on a nearby wall:

"A pin is a device for fastening objects of material together which we think is a fitting metaphor for the museum."

What I couldn't see from a distance, but is as clear as day now, is that this artwork is an assemblage of giant 'pins'. Artists Sara Hughes and Gregor Kregor have created a contemporary sculptural artwork entitled 'Pin Cushion'. I turn and head back towards the beach smiling.

Born from the rubble and dust 91 years ago, Napier has preserved a moment in time, a bygone era, a flamboyant artistic movement. But there are also seeds of a new art, culture and business emerging.

Because you can never really stop the clock. Not even after an earthquake.

End